EAI, web services and high school grammar classes

My one and only new year's resolution this year is to take the time to
write down all of the silly questions I have in my head that I would
like to have answered. The kind of questions we knowledge workers do not
ask willingly because of fear that we will look silly or ill-informed.
Here are a couple from my ever-expanding list:

1) Archaeologists must dig down into the earth to discover stone age
artifacts. Where did all of the new earth come from to bury everything?

2) Is there a scientific explanation for the fact that the moon is just
the right size to totally eclipse the sun, and that it is at just the
right rotational speed to ensure we only see one side of it from Earth?

3) Why are there two tides a day? (I have read a few explanations for
that one but still don't feel that I understand it properly.)

I remember studying English grammar in my youth and finding my head
exploding with "why" questions I was too diffident to ask. Here are some
I remember:

1) Are irregular verbs unavoidable? Wouldn't language acquisition be so
much easier without them? Why do they exist?

2) Why are there so many "special cases" that break the rules?

3) Why are there so many more nouns than verbs?

Let's skip the question about the avoidability of irregular verbs and
the plenitude of special cases. (I still have not come across a good
explanation of these phenomena!). Instead, let's concentrate on the
question of the disparity between the number of verbs and the number of
nouns.

It sounds plausible that in the classic subject/verb/object scheme of
things common to almost all languages, there are many more objects in
the world than there are actions you would want to perform on objects.
By combining a small number of verbs with a large number of nouns
(objects), you create a very large communication space with the minimum
of fuss. As long as you know the general rule for applying verbs to
nouns you can do so without any extra language machinery beyond the
general rule. I'll buy that.

Believe it or not, this brings us nicely onto the subject of enterprise
application integration (EAI) in general and web services in particular.

The web can usefully be thought of as a large collection of nouns. These
nouns are known as URLs. Basically, things that have addresses, created
using a unified, universal naming convention.

The web also has a small set of verbs. Some of the most common are GET,
PUT, POST and DELETE. The HTTP protocol is basically the means by which
we apply this small set of verbs to a vast sea of nouns on the web.

Recently however, we have seen the emergence of the web equivalent of
irregular verbs. Hoards of them in fact. Each of which must be learned
on a case-by-case basis. There is no rhyme or reason to how these verbs
work.

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